An estimated 15,000 people died
from hepatitis C in the U.S. in 2007,
when it surpassed AIDS as a cause of
death.

Sovaldi, a new pill for hepatitis C,
cures the liver-wasting disease in 9
of 10 patients, but treatment can cost
more than $90,000.

teacher assistant Margarita Sokolova, second from left, helps Giuliana Zautta, 17, of
Menlo Park, Calif., during a Girls Who Code class at Adobe Systems in San Jose, Calif.
Girls Who Code, a national non-profit organization that aims to inspire, educate and
equip young women for futures in the computing-related fields, kicked off its summer
program in partnership with the world’s leading tech companies. The summer program
will reach 380 high school girls across 19 classes in New York, Boston, Miami, Seattle
and the Bay Area. Fewer than one percent of high school girls think of computer science
as part of their future, even though it’s one of the fastest growing fields in the U.S. today
with a projected 4.2 million jobs by 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.(

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) -- Diana Navarro loves to code, and
she’s not afraid to admit it. But the 18-year-old Rutgers University
computer science major knows she’s an anomaly: Writing software to
run computer programs in 2014 is - more than ever - a man’s world.
“We live in a culture where we’re dissuaded to do things that are
technical,” Navarro said. “Younger girls see men, not women, doing
all the techie stuff, programming and computer science.”
Less than one percent of high school girls think of computer science
as part of their future, even though it’s one of the fastest-growing
fields in the U.S. today with a projected 4.2 million jobs by 2020,
according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

REPORT: CHINESE PHONE
COMES PRELOADED
W I T H S P Y WA R E

Leading medical societies recommend the drug as a first-line treatment, and patients are clamoring
for it. But insurance companies and
state Medicaid programs are gagging
on the price. In Oregon, officials propose to limit how many low-income
patients can get Sovaldi.

This undated handout photo provided by Gilead Sciences shows the Hepatitis-C medication Sovaldi. Sovaldi, a new pill for hepatitis C, cures the
liver-wasting disease in 9 of 10 patients, but treatment can cost more than
$90,000. Leading medical societies recommend the drug and patients are
clamoring for it. But insurance companies and state Medicaid programs
are gagging on the price. In Oregon, officials propose to limit how many
low-income patients can get it.

Yet if Sovaldi didn’t exist, insurers
would still be paying in the mid-tohigh five figures to treat the most common kind of hepatitis C, a
new pricing survey indicates. Some of the older alternatives involve more side effects, and are less likely to provide cures.
So what’s a fair price?

The cost of this breakthrough drug is highlighting cracks in the
U.S. health care system at a time of heightened budget concerns.
The Obama administration has a huge political stake in controlling treatment costs, but its critics may cry rationing.

“If it’s going to get me the medicine,
I’ll put my hand out there with a tin
cup,” said Stuart Rose, a hepatitis C
patient in New York City. His insurance would pay only $4,000 a year
for medications, but Rose was able to
get assistance from charitable foundations. He recently started taking
Sovaldi.

Until the drug’s approval late last
year, standard treatment for the most
common type of the disease required
daily pills and extended use of interferon, an injection that can produce debilitating flu-like symptoms. “Brain fog,” said Rose.
Taken once a day for 12 weeks, Sovaldi greatly reduces the length
of interferon treatment, making things more tolerable for patients.
Now, many more people might want to try the cure.
A similar drug, Olysio, also approved last year, is priced a bit
lower.

“People are going to want to try to dodge this hot potato,” says
economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin.

The nation’s largest care provider for chronic hepatitis C, the
federal Veterans Administration, sees promise. With 175,000 patients, the VA has started more than 1,850 of them on Sovaldi.

For insurers, there’s a frustrating twist: For each middle-aged person they pay to cure with Sovaldi, any financial benefits from preventing liver failure are likely to accrue to Medicare, not to them.

“After 20 years in infectious diseases, I never thought we would
be in a position to cure this disease,” said Dr. David Ross, head
of the VA’s program.

More than 3 million Americans carry the hepatitis C virus, and
many don’t realize it. It’s a public health concern since the disease
can be transmitted by contact with infected blood, and sometimes
through sexual activity. Health officials advise all baby boomers
to get tested.

By law, the VA gets drug discounts of over 40 percent. Will the
agency break even by avoiding the disease’s worst complications?

The illness is complex, with distinct virus types requiring different treatments. While it progresses gradually, it can ultimately
destroy the liver, and transplants average $577,000.

Private insurers will probably introduce Sovaldi gradually. “Not
everybody is going to get this all at once,” said former Medicare
administrator Mark McClellan.

Not necessarily, said Ross. “If it leads to cost benefits in the long
run, that’s gravy.”

continued on page 3

FDA PREPPING LONG-AWAITED
P L A N T O R E D U C E S A LT
on making foods less salty. The IOM advised the government to
establish maximum sodium levels for different foods, though the
FDA said then - and maintains now - that it favors a voluntary
route.
Americans eat about 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt daily, about a third
more than the government recommends for good health and
enough to increase the risk of high blood pressure, strokes and
other problems. Most of that sodium is hidden inside common
processed foods and restaurant meals.

BERLIN (AP) -- A cheap brand of Chinese-made smartphones carried
by major online retailers comes preinstalled with espionage software, a
German security firm said Tuesday.
G Data Software said it found malicious code hidden deep in the
propriety software of the Star N9500 when it ordered the handset from
a website late last month. The find is the latest in a series of incidents
where smartphones have appeared preloaded with malicious software.
G Data spokesman Thorsten Urbanski said his firm bought the phone
after getting complaints about it from several customers. He said his
team spent more than a week trying to trace the handset’s maker without
success.
“The manufacturer is not mentioned,” he said. “Not in the phone, not in
the documentation, nothing else.”
The Associated Press found the phone for sale on several major retail
websites, offered by an array of companies listed in Shenzhen, in
southern China. It could not immediately find a reference to the phone’s
manufacturer.
G Data said the spyware it found on the N9500 could allow a hacker to
steal personal data, place rogue calls, or turn on the phone’s camera and
microphone. G Data said the stolen information was sent to a server in
China.
Bjoern Rupp, chief executive of the Berlin-based mobile security
consultancy firm GSMK, said such cases are more common than people
think. Last fall, German cellphone service provider E-Plus found
malicious software on some handsets delivered to customers of its Base
brand.
“We have to assume that such incidents will increasingly occur, for
different commercial and other reasons,” said Rupp.

a shopper walking down the canned soup aisle at a grocery store in Cincinnati. Food
companies and restaurants could soon face government pressure to make their foods
less salty _ a long-awaited federal effort to try and prevent thousands of deaths each
year from heart disease and stroke.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Food companies and restaurants could
soon face government pressure to make their foods less salty - a
long-awaited federal effort to try to prevent thousands of deaths
each year from heart disease and stroke.
The Food and Drug Administration is preparing to issue voluntary guidelines asking the food industry to lower sodium levels,
FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg told The Associated
Press. Hamburg said in a recent interview that the sodium is “of
huge interest and concern” and she hopes the guidelines will be
issued “relatively soon.”
“We believe we can make a big impact working with the
industry to bring sodium levels down, because the current level
of consumption really is higher than it should be for health,”
Hamburg said.
The food industry has already made some reductions, and
has prepared for government action since a 2010 Institute of
Medicine report said companies had not made enough progress

In addition to flavor, companies use sodium to increase shelf
life, prevent the growth of bacteria, or improve texture and
appearance. That makes it more difficult to remove from some
products, Hamburg noted.
Once the guidelines are issued, Americans won’t notice an immediate taste difference in higher-sodium foods like pizza, pasta,
bread and soups. The idea would be to encourage gradual change
so consumers’ taste buds can adjust, and to give the companies
time to develop lower-sodium foods.
“I think one of the things we are very mindful of is that we need
to have a realistic timeline,” Hamburg said.
Health groups would prefer mandatory standards, but say voluntary guidelines are a good first step.
Still, Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public
Interest says he is concerned companies may hesitate, worried
that their competitors won’t lower sodium in their products.
If that happens, “then FDA should start a process of mandatory
limits,” Jacobson says.
That’s what companies are worried about. Though the limits
would be voluntary, the FDA is at heart a regulatory agency, and
continued on page 6

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NEW YORK (AP) -- Wealthy
donors are lavishing money on
their favored charities, including
universities, hospitals and arts institutions, while giving is flat to
social service and church groups
more dependent on financially
squeezed middle-class donors,
according to the latest comprehensive report on how Americans give away their money.

social woes persist in many
communities, Palmer said.

Rooney noted that many
social-service organizations focus on obtaining
government contracts and
grants, while devoting fewer
resources to courting wealthy
donors. Universities typically
have large, highly professional fundraising staffs, and
an easily identifiable pool of
potential benefactors.

The Giving USA report, being
released Tuesday, said Americans gave an estimated $335.17
billion to charity in 2013, up 3
percent from 2012 after adjustment for inflation.
Reflecting the nation’s widening
wealth gap, some sectors fared far
better than others. Adjusted for inflation, giving was up 7.4 percent for education, 6.3 percent for the arts and humanities, and
4.5 percent for health organizations, while giving to religious
groups declined by 1.6 percent and giving to social service
groups rose by only 0.7 percent.
Experts with the Giving USA Foundation and its research partner, the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy,
said it was the fourth straight year of increased overall giving,
and predicted that within two more years the total could match
the pre-recession peak of $347.5 billion.
During and immediately after the recession, some wealthy
donors shifted their giving to social service groups working to
combat hunger and homelessness, according to Patrick Rooney,
associate dean of the school of philanthropy. Now, many of
those donors - including some making multimillion-dollar gifts
- are refocusing their attention on higher education, the arts and
other sectors long patronized by the affluent, he said.
The trend is readily apparent in the listings of recent major charitable gifts compiled by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, which
provides news coverage of the nonprofit world.
Among the 100 largest recent gifts, which range from $7.5
million to $275 million, the recipients overwhelmingly are universities and hospitals, along with a few arts institutions. Only
four of the gifts are to social service organizations and one to a
religious group.

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4205 Dover Road

www.childrenincorporated.

Almost all the U.S. income gains from 2009 to 2012 flowed
to the top 1 percent of earners, according to tax data analyzed
by economist Emmanuel Saez at the University of California,
Berkeley. By contrast, median household income was $51,017
in 2012, $4,600 below its peak in 2007, according to the Census
Bureau.
“It’s the very wealthiest who have recovered the most in terms
of the giving potential, and the very wealthiest do tend to give
their biggest gifts to colleges and hospitals,” said Stacy Palmer,
the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s editor.
Those are the institutions that ask more effectively, she added.
“They have development offices who offer donors these ambitious plans.”

POTECTING SPEICIES

In contrast, she said many social service organizations rely
heavily on less wealthy donors who may not yet feel they
have fully recovered from the recession. Compounding their
struggles, some of those organizations are still experiencing
increased demand for services as high unemployment and other

“For many wealthy alumni,
their alma mater is an important part of what made them
who they are,” Rooney said.
As usual, religious organizations received more donations than any other sector in 2013,
with $105.5 billion in gifts. However, Giving USA said that
was the lowest portion of total giving - 31 percent - for church
groups in four decades.
Rooney said giving to churches has been relatively flat for about
15 years, as many denominations report declining attendance,
and polls show a drop in the percentage of Americans who
consider themselves religious.
“If you don’t attend church, you’re not likely to give,” said
Rooney. “And most churches’ fundraising efforts are `Pass the
plate.’” They don’t have staff with a more scientific approach.”
The Illinois-based research firm Empty Tomb, which tracks
religious giving trends, says church members are giving less of
their income to their churches than they used to - 2.3 percent in
2011 compared to 3.1 percent in 1968.
One consequence, according to Empty Tomb vice president
Sylvia Ronsvalle, is relatively less money available for the
churches’ social service and missionary programs.
“I fault church leadership for not giving people a vision,” she
said. “We’ve left the playing field to these other categories.”
The nation’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, reported earlier this month that the total of gifts
to its churches dropped by nearly 1.4 percent last year.
Bill Townes, the SBC’s vice president for finance, said the denomination continued to believe it can carry out its mission, but
said of the giving trend, “We’d like it to turn around.”
Depending on the means of measurement, both wealthy Americans and those of more modest means can claim credit for their
generosity.
According to a 2012 Bank of America study, the wealthiest 3
percent of American households accounted for about 35 percent
of all giving by individuals in 2011.
Yet the National Center for Charitable Statistics, citing IRS data
for 2011, said Americans with incomes under $100,000 gave
away a higher percentage of their income - about 3.6 percent
- than those with incomes between $100,000 and $1 million,
for whom the figure was about 2.5 percent. Other studies have
found that residents of relatively poor states in the South - including Alabama and Mississippi - are among the most generous
in the nation in terms of the percentage of their discretionary
income that they gave to charity.

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Now the question that conservators at The Phillips Collection in
Washington hope to answer is simply: Who is he?
It’s a mystery that’s fueling new research about the 1901
painting created early in Picasso’s career while he was working
in Paris at the start of his distinctive blue period of melancholy
subjects.
Curators and conservators revealed the discovery of the portrait
for the first time to The Associated Press last week.

Patricia Favero, associate conservator at The Phillips Collection, points to an image
of a man found underneath one of Picasso’s first masterpieces, “The Blue Room,” on
Tuesday, June 10, 2014, in Washington. Scientists and art experts have found a hidden painting beneath the painting. Advances in infrared imagery reveal a bow-tied man
with his face resting on his hand, with three rings on his fingers. Now the question that
conservators at The Phillips Collection in Washington hope to answer is simply: Who is
he? It’s a mystery that’s fueling new research about the 1901 painting created early in
Picasso’s career while he was working in Paris at the start of his distinctive blue period
of melancholy subjects.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Scientists and art experts finally know
what’s beneath one of Pablo Picasso’s first masterpieces, “The
Blue Room,” using advances in infrared imagery to reveal a hidden portrait of a bow-tied man with his face resting on his hand.

Experts long suspected there might be something under the surface of “The Blue Room,” which has been part of The Phillips
Collection since 1927. Brushstrokes on the piece clearly don’t
match the composition that depicts a woman bathing in Picasso’s
studio.
A conservator noted the odd brushstrokes in a 1954 letter, but it
wasn’t until the 1990s that an X-ray of the painting first revealed
a fuzzy image of something under the picture. It wasn’t clear,
though, that it was a portrait.
In 2008, improved infrared imagery revealed for the first time a
man’s bearded face resting on his hand with three rings on his
fingers. He’s dressed in a jacket and bow tie, painted in a vertical
composition.

R A R E S TA M P C O U L D S E T
R E C O R D AT N Y C A U C T I O N
McKinnon kept it for five years before selling it to a Liverpool
dealer who recognized the unassuming stamp as highly uncommon.
He paid 120 pounds for it and quickly resold it for 150 pounds to
Count Philippe la Renotiere von Ferrary, one of the world’s greatest
stamp collectors.

Upon his death in 1917, the count bequeathed his stamp collection
to the Postmuseum in Berlin. The collection was later seized by
France as war reparations and sold off in a series of 14 auctions with
the One-Cent Magenta bringing $35,000 in 1922 - an auction record
for a single stamp.
Arthur Hind, a textile magnate from Utica, New York, was the
buyer. King George V was an under-bidder. It is the one major piece
absent from the Royal Family’s heirloom collection, Beech said.
This photo taken June 5, 2014 shows diagrams in a room where the Drake bug collection is held at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in Washington. When Dr. Carl
J. Drake died in 1965 he left the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History
$250,000 and his collection of thousands of bugs. Drake, an entomologist, spent his life
studying insects, and he gave the Smithsonian a mission for his money: buy more bugs.
After nearly half a century, however, the Smithsonian is having a hard time following the
directives of Drake’s will.

NEW YORK (AP) -- A 1-cent postage stamp from a 19th century
British colony in South America is poised to become the world’s
most valuable stamp - again.
The 1856 British Guiana One-Cent Magenta could bring $10 million to $20 million when it goes on the auction block at Sotheby’s
on Tuesday.
Three times in its long history, the little stamp has broken the auction record for a single stamp.
Measuring 1 inch-by-1 1/4 inches, it hasn’t been on public view
since 1986 and is the only major stamp absent from the British
Royal Family’s private Royal Philatelic Collection.

After Hind’s death in 1933, the stamp was to be auctioned with the
rest of his collection until his wife brought a lawsuit, claiming it
was left to her.
The next owner was Frederick Small, an Australian engineer living
in Florida who purchased it privately from Hind’s widow for
$45,000 in 1940. Thirty years later, he consigned the stamp to a
New York auction where it was purchased by an investment consortium for $280,000 - another record.
The stamp set its third record in 1980 when it sold for $935,000 to
du Pont.

APNEWSBREAK: HEMP
S E E D S S E I Z E D AT
US-CANADA BORDER

“You’re not going to find anything rarer than this,” according to
Allen Kane, director of the Smithsonian National Postal Museum.
“It’s a stamp the world of collectors has been dying to see for a long
time.”
An 1855 Swedish stamp, which sold for $2.3 million in 1996, currently holds the auction record for a single stamp.
David Beech, longtime curator of stamps at the British Library who
retired last year, has compared it to buying the “Mona Lisa” of the
world’s most prized stamps.
The last owner was John E. du Pont, an heir to the du Pont chemical
fortune who was convicted of fatally shooting a 1984 Olympic
champion wrestler. It’s being sold by his estate, which will designate part of the proceeds to the Eurasian Pacific Wildlife Conservation Foundation that du Pont championed.
Printed in black on magenta paper, it bears the image of a
three-masted ship and the colony’s motto, in Latin, “we give and
expect in return.” It went into circulation after a shipment of stamps
was delayed from London and the postmaster asked printers for
the Royal Gazette newspaper in Georgetown in British Guiana to
produce three stamps until the shipment arrived: a 1-cent magenta, a
4-cent magenta and a 4-cent blue.
While multiple examples of the 4-cent stamps have survived, only
the tiny 1-cent issue is known to exist today.
Its first owner was a 12-year-old Scottish boy living in South
America who added it to his collection after finding it among family
papers in 1873. He soon sold it for a few shillings to a local collector, Neil McKinnon.

cating cousin.

DENVER (AP) -Hundreds of pounds of
industrial hemp seeds
bound from Canada to
Colorado have been
seized by federal
authorities in North
Dakota, marking the
latest bump along the
road to legalization of
marijuana’s non-intoxi-

At the center of the dispute is hemp activist Tom McClain. Armed
with a copy of last year’s federal Farm Bill, which allowed states
to permit hemp cultivation for research and development, he set
off for MacGregor, Manitoba, and bought 350 pounds of seeds
used to grow a strain known as X-59 or Hemp Nut.
Hemp is legal in Canada, and North Dakota is one of 15 states
with laws that allow limited hemp production. However, under
the Farm Bill, importing hemp seeds requires permission from
the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
McClain’s seeds were confiscated Saturday at the border
crossing in Hansboro, North Dakota, after he says he declared
the seven bags in his trunk. McClain, however, has not been
charged with a crime.
“They treated me very professionally,” McClain said after he
returned to Colorado - without the seeds. “They were just a little
confused as to what to do. According to them, I couldn’t bring
them in.”
Shawn Neudauer, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, confirmed the seizure.

I N
M A

3

G
N

“It’s really one of those moments that really makes what you do
special,” said Patricia Favero, the conservator at The Phillips
Collection who pieced together the best infrared image yet of the
man’s face.
“The second reaction was, `Well, who is it?’ We’re still working
on answering that question.”
Scholars have ruled out the possibility that it was a self-portrait.
One possible figure is the Paris art dealer Ambrose Villard, who
hosted Picasso’s first show in 1901. But there’s no documentation and no clues left on the canvass, so the research continues.
Over the past five years, experts from The Phillips Collection,
National Gallery of Art, Cornell University and Delaware’s Winterthur Museum have developed a clearer image of the mystery
picture under the surface. A technical analysis confirmed the
hidden portrait is a work Picasso likely painted just before “The
Blue Room,” curators said.
Since the portrait was discovered, conservators have been using
other technology to scan the painting for further insights. Favero
has been collaborating with other experts to scan the painting
with multi-spectral imaging technology and X-ray fluorescence
intensity mapping to try to identify and map the colors of the
hidden painting. They would like to recreate a digital image
approximating the colors Picasso used.
Curators are planning the first exhibit focused on “The Blue
Room” as a seminal work in Picasso’s career for 2017. It will examine the revelation of the man’s portrait beneath the painting,
as well as other Picasso works and his engagement with other
artists.
For now, “The Blue Room” is part of a tour to South Korea
through early 2015 as the research continues.
Hidden pictures have been found under other important Picasso
paintings. A technical analysis of “La Vie” at the Cleveland
Museum of Art revealed Picasso significantly reworked the
painting’s composition. And conservators found a portrait of a
mustached man beneath Picasso’s painting “Woman Ironing” at
the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan.
“When he had an idea, you know, he just had to get it down and
realize it,” Phillips curator Susan Behrends Frank told the AP,
describing how Picasso had hurriedly painted “The Blue Room”
over another complete picture. “He could not afford to acquire
new canvasses every time he had an idea that he wanted to pursue. He worked sometimes on cardboard because canvass was so
much more expensive.”
Dorothy Kosinski, the director of The Phillips Collection, said
new knowledge about Picasso and his process can be discovered
through the high-tech collaboration among museums.
“Our audiences are hungry for this. It’s kind of detective work.
It’s giving them a doorway of access that I think enriches, maybe
adds mystery, while allowing them to be part of a piecing together of a puzzle,” she said. “The more we can understand, the
greater our appreciation is of its significance in Picasso’s life.”

“The shipment is currently undergoing scientific evaluation, as
hemp seeds can look much like marijuana seeds,” Neudauer
said in a statement.
The seizure underscored the difficulties facing the fledgling U.S.
hemp industry after five decades of prohibition.
Hemp is prized for oils, seeds and fiber, but its production
had been prohibited because the plant can be manipulated to
enhance the psychoactive chemical THC - the intoxicant found
in marijuana.
In another recent case, U.S. customs officials in Louisville, Kentucky, held a shipment of hemp seeds from Italy that was bound
for research grows.
Kentucky agriculture authorities sued the Justice Department,
the Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Customs and Border
Protection and Attorney General Eric Holder to force the return of
the seeds. The DEA eventually relented and issued a permit to
allow limited hemp planting for research in the state.
McClain and Jason Lauve of the Colorado-based activist group
Hemp Cleans have appealed to congressional representatives in
the state to resolve the seed flap in North Dakota.
A spokeswoman for Colorado’s Agriculture Department, Christi
Lightcap, said the agency hasn’t been approached to intervene.
Colorado has accepted more than 40 hemp-cultivation applications. But the state has a “don’t-ask-don’t-tell” policy about the
origin of the seeds used in the work.
Growers, meanwhile, have expressed frustration over the limited
availability of seeds that are affordable and haven’t been smuggled into the country.
The seeds confiscated in North Dakota were destined for experimental plots. Lauve said owners have only about two weeks to
get the seeds planted so they can harvest the hemp before snow
falls.

4

The Weekly News Digest, June 23, 2014

___________________________________________________________________

F L O R I D A C R A S H S TAT I S T I C S

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LOCAL: 561-395-8055

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4205 Dover Road

www.childrenincorporated.

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John Muir (1838-1914) was America’s most famous and influential naturalist and conservationist, and founder of the Sierra Club. This website,
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Improves the health and
lives of people affected by
poverty, disaster, and civil
unrest.
Learn more

tornado was spotted southwest of Pilger, according to the Stanton
County Sheriff’s Office. Shortly afterward, the town suffered a “direct
hit” that leveled several buildings, including the Fire Department
building.

Pilger’s 350 residents evacuated their homes after the powerful twisters slammed the area Monday afternoon. Nebraska State Patrol closed
all roads into town.

Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman declared a state of emergency, and the
National Guard was preparing to assist local emergency responders
and help with the cleanup. Heineman and officials with the Nebraska
Emergency Management Agency were expected to arrive Tuesday
morning. A shelter for displaced residents was established at Wisner-Pilger Jr.-Sr. High School in nearby Wisner.

“More than half of the town is gone - absolutely gone,” Stanton County Commissioner Jerry Weatherholt said. “The co-op is gone, the grain
bins are gone, and it looks like almost every house in town has some
damage. It’s a complete mess.”
Larry Nelson, 73, has lived in Pilger, about 80 miles northwest of
Omaha, for 23 years. He rode out the storm in his neighbor’s basement, emerging later to find his home completely gone.
“I’m grateful I was over there,” Nelson said.
Another resident, Trey Wisniewski, said first his weather radio alerted
him, then the power went out and the tornado sirens started to sound.
The sky went black and he and his wife took their pets into the basement.
“My wife was holding our animals and I was holding on to my wife.
We could feel the suction try to pull is out of there,” said Wisniewski,
43. “It wasn’t raining. It was raining debris.”
Stanton County Sheriff Mike Unger estimated that 50 to 75 percent
of Pilger was heavily damaged or destroyed and the school was likely
beyond repair.
The storm was part of a larger system that tracked across the nation’s
midsection Monday. More storms are forecast for Tuesday, stretching
from eastern Montana to New York, but the system likely won’t be
as powerful as on Monday, said Steve Corfidi, lead forecaster at the
Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.
The greatest risk for tornadoes will be in the Dakotas, eastern Montana
and northeastern Wyoming. Hail is expected west of the Mississippi
River, while damaging winds could down some trees in upstate New
York, Corfidi said.
Stanton County Sheriff’s deputy Josh Bennett said a 5-year-old girl
was killed in Pilger on Monday. Bennett did not identify the child
further or provide details about her death.
Unger said Tuesday that a motorist also died in a single-vehicle

Tornadoes also caused damage in Cuming and Wayne counties, the
Nebraska Emergency Management Agency said in a news release.
Meteorologists also tracked a reported tornado near the town of Burwell, in central Nebraska.
Two tornados approach Pilger, Neb., Monday June 16, 2014. The National Weather Service said at least two twisters touched down within roughly a mile of each other Monday
in northeast Nebraska.

accident just east of Pilger as the storm pounded the area. State patrol
confirmed that a male driver died in Cuming County.
At least 19 people were taken to hospitals.
The National Weather Service said the two twisters touched down
within roughly a mile of each other. Crews planned to examine the
area Tuesday to determine the intensity of the unusual twin tornadoes, said Barbara Mayes, a meteorologist with the National Weather
Service in Valley.
“It’s less common for two tornadoes to track together for so long,
especially with that same intensity,” she said. “By no means is it
unprecedented. But we don’t see it often.”
Residents were poised to return Tuesday morning to survey the damage and gather valuables. Sheriffs said law enforcement would escort
residents to their properties.
Jodi Richey, a spokeswoman for Faith Regional Health Services in
nearby Norfolk, said 16 people were treated there. Some were in critical condition but others were treated and released.
Providence Medical Center in Wayne treated three tornado victims,
including two who had lacerations, said hospital spokeswoman Sandy
Bartling. Two were released Monday evening, and the third was in
stable condition.
Authorities said the first tornado touched down around 3:45 p.m. and
downed several power lines before it leveled a farmhouse. The second

K E N YA P R E S I D E N T B L A M E S
LOCALS FOR DEADLY ATTACKS
leaders. He did not get more specific.
Kenyatta said police officials in Mpeketoni had advance intelligence about the attack but did not act on it. The president
said some officers have been suspended and will be prosecuted.

Kenyatta said that some political leaders are preaching the
idea that some Kenyans are less human than others. “My deputy and I will never go the route of ethnic violence,” Kenyatta
said.

Abdullahi Abdi, left, Chairman National Muslim Leaders Forum ( NAMLEF) with members
of the Muslim Council of Kenya speaks to the media in Nairobi, Kenya, Tuesday, June,
17, 2014. Extremists attacked a coastal area of Kenya for the second night in a row,
killing at least nine people a day after the deaths of nearly 50, an official said Tuesday.
Police spokesman Masoud Mwinyi said that al-Shabab militants attacked Majembeni
village. The Somali militant group also claimed responsibility for the Sunday night attack
in nearby Mpeketoni that killed 48 people. The Muslim leaders condemned the killings
as savage acts and warned that they should not divide Kenyans along religious lines.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- Kenya’s president blamed political
leaders inside Kenya Tuesday for carrying out two nights of
deadly attacks that killed at least 60 people in coastal communities, saying that despite claims of responsibility from
al-Shabab, the Islamic extremists were not behind it.
President Uhuru Kenyatta, in a nationally televised address,
said evidence indicates that local political leaders inside Kenya
were behind what he termed ethnically motivated violence. The
Somali militant group al-Shabab had claimed responsibility for
two nights of attacks near the tourist resort island of Lamu that
targeted non-Muslims.
The newer attack came Monday night in Majembeni village
in which 10 people died. The village is next to Mpeketoni,
where four dozen Christian men were slaughtered Sunday
night and Monday morning.
Al-Shabab said the second attack killed government workers
and Christians. A county commissioner, Benson Maisori, said
the attackers appear to have been the same in both cases.
“The style of killing is the same. They slit the victims’ throats
wide open or shot them several times in the head,” said Maisori.
But in a surprising turn of events, Kenyatta said outright that
al-Shabab did not plan and execute the attack, but rather local

The back-to-back attacks underscore the weak security
around the Lamu area, which lies just south of the Somali
border. Lamu once attracted swarms of foreign visitors but its
tourist sector has been suffering in recent years because of the
violence.
Interior Minister Joseph Ole Lenku said a new slate of government and security officials have been installed in Lamu, in
part because “there seems to be some inside job.”
Ole Lenku said the problem facing the country “is elaborate
and is intended to cause discord among our people.” Meanwhile, Muslim leaders on Tuesday conferred inside Nairobi’s
largest mosque, a grand white facade nestled among the capital’s high rises. The bearded elders from four different Muslim
groups condemned what they called savage acts and ghastly
killings and said there was no justification for the deaths.
The Muslims leaders warned of a potential sectarian rift.
“The continued violence risks tearing the country apart,”
they said, continuing later: “We need to be cognizant of the
fact that some of these attacks are aimed at planning seeds of
discord and animosity among Kenyans and divide the country
along ethnic and religious lines.”
The Muslim leaders said the government is taking “kneejerk reactions” and harassing specific communities, a
reference to Kenya’s Somali population, which has suffered
in a widespread crackdown the last several months which has
seen the arrests of thousands of Somalis and the deportation
of dozens.
Kenya has seen ethnic violence rip apart the country in
recent years. More than 1,000 people were killed in ethnically
motivated violence after the country’s 2007 election. That
violence, though, did not have religious component to it.

$ 1 , 0 0 0 - A - P I L L
continued from page 1

Drug maker Gilead Sciences, Inc., reported Sovaldi sales of $2.3
billion worldwide in just the first three months of this year. Gilead
will not disclose its pricing methods, but vice president Gregg
Alton said the drug’s high cure rate makes it “a real huge value.”
In many countries, the government sets drug prices. In the US,
insurers negotiate with drug companies. Medicare is forbidden
from bargaining, a situation that critics say saddles U.S. patients
with high costs while subsidizing the rest of the world.
The Associated Press asked DRX, a technology company that
researches drug prices for major insurers and government programs, to look at Sovaldi. The findings:
- There aren’t many deep discounts:
The midpoint - or median- discount that private payers are securing is about 14 percent off the average wholesale price of $1,200 a
pill, bringing it down to $1,037. The biggest discount DRX found
was nearly 36 percent, approaching the VA rate, and bringing the
cost to $773. DRX surveyed more than 300 payers.
- How do other drugs compare?
DRX compared the total drug cost of treating the most common
type of hepatitis C with Sovaldi and three alternatives. The regimen included pills, interferon and an antiviral called ribavirin.
Treatment with Sovaldi had the highest cost, a median of $97,376.
The lowest was $48,084 for Victrelis, a somewhat older drug with
a lower cure rate.
Two others were about $8,000 less than Sovaldi. The total median
cost with Incivek was $89,178. With Olyisio, it was $89,319.
“While Sovaldi still is the most expensive, all of these are five-figure regimens,” said Jim Yocum, DRX executive vice president.
“Sovaldi is an advance ... and it doesn’t seem to be priced completely out of whack.”
But Dr. Sharon Levine, a top official working on drug policy with
insurer Kaiser Permanente, disagrees.
“There was never any question that we would cover and prescribe
this drug,” said Levine. But she firmly believes the price is out of
line. Countries where the government sets drug prices are paying
much less, she noted.
U.S. insurers aren’t interested in price controls, said Levine, but
“eventually the American public is going to start getting very
uncomfortable” with high prices. Drug costs have moderated in
recent years, but new medications in the pipeline for cancer and
other diseases are expected to push spending up.
The California Technology Assessment Forum, a private group
that reviews medical treatments, recently voted Sovaldi a “low
value,” because it would be cost-prohibitive to treat the high
number of potentially eligible patients. But after their own assessment, the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases issued clinical
guidelines recommending that doctors use Sovaldi as a primary
treatment.
Meanwhile, Gilead has a new hepatitis C pill close to approval
that will not require interferon use.
There’s no word on how it will be priced.

again, rebuilding its reserves and preventing the recession from
getting even deeper.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) -- Argentina’s president is
refusing to go along with a U.S. judge’s ruling requiring a $1.5
billion repayment of defaulted bonds, even though the U.S.
Supreme Court rejected her government’s appeals and left the
order in place.

U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Griesa order requires that
$1.5 billion be paid “all together, without quotas, right away,
now, in cash, ahead of all the rest” of bondholders, Fernandez
said.

In a national address Monday night, Cristina Fernandez repeatedly vowed not to submit to “extortion,” and said she had been
working on ways to keep Argentina’s commitments to other
creditors despite the threat of losing use of the U.S. financial
system.
Her hard line came hours after the justices in Washington
refused to hear Argentina’s appeal, and it could be a last effort
to gain leverage ahead of a negotiated solution that both sides
say they want. But with only days before a huge debt payment
ordered by the court is due, many economists, analysts and
politicians said the country’s already fragile economy could be
deeply harmed if she didn’t immediately resolve the dispute.
Argentina’s Economy Minister Axel Kicillof will hold a press
conference at 6 p.m. local time (5 p.m. EDT) to explain the
Supreme Court’s decision and how Argentina’s government
will proceed.
Refusing to comply with rulings that have been allowed to
stand by the U.S. Supreme Court “would be very damaging to
the Argentine economy in the near future,” said Miguel Kiguel,
a former deputy finance minister and World Bank economist in
the 1990s who runs the Econviews consulting firm in Buenos
Aires.
Argentine markets were already reflecting fear. The Merval
stock index dropped 10 percent after Monday’s court decision,
its largest one-day loss in more than six months, and the value
of Argentina’s currency plunged 3 percent on the black market.
But on Tuesday, Argentina’s official peso currency opened
stable at 8.14 against the U.S. dollar. The black market peso

“This represents a profit of 1,608 percent, in dollars!” she complained. “I believe that in all of organized crime there has never
been a case of a profit of 1,608 percent in such a short time.”

A woman looks at old currency during the opening of the Foreign Debt Museum in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The museum, which is the world’s first dedicated to a country’s
debt, opened nearly four years after Argentina staged the largest debt default in modern
history. Argentine President Cristina Fernandez said Monday June 16, 2014 that Argentina can’t comply with U.S. court orders to pay $1.5 billion to winners of a decade-long
legal battle over defaulted debt, the position her country was left in Monday when the
U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear her government’s final appeal.

also remained nearly unchanged trading between 11.85 and 12
against the dollar. The Merval index was down 2.28 percent
in opening trade. The Edenor Argentine electricity distribution
company, was trading 6.28 lower after plunging by 20 percent a
day earlier on the Supreme Court’s decision.

Singer’s NML Capital Ltd. has now won in the U.S. courts
- and if Argentina doesn’t hand over $907 million to the plaintiffs in the next two weeks, the judge will order U.S. banks
not to process Argentina’s June 30 payment totaling an equal
amount to all the other bondholders.

Fernandez urged her countrymen to “remain tranquil” in the
days ahead.

Fernandez said her government “will not default on those who
believed in Argentina.” But analysts have questioned whether
holders of restructured debt would accept payments outside the
U.S. financial system.

Bowing to the U.S. courts would force her to betray a core
value that she and her late husband and predecessor, Nestor
Kirchner, promoted since they took over the government in
2003: Argentina must maintain its sovereignty and economic
independence at any cost.
But a chorus of analysts said that if she complied with the
ruling, it would become much easier for Argentina to borrow

R E D U C E

S A LT M I N I M U M WA G E
D E B AT E P I T S C I T I E S
the guidelines would be interpreted as a stern warning.
AGAINST STATES
Brian Kennedy of the Grocery Manufacturers Association,
continued from page 1

which represents the country’s biggest food companies, says the
group is concerned about the FDA setting targets and any guidelines should be based on a “rigorous assessment of all available
scientific evidence.”

Many food companies and retailers already have pushed to
reduce salt. Wal-Mart pledged to reduce sodium in many items
by 25 percent by next year, and food giant ConAgra Foods says
it made a 20 percent reduction. Subway restaurants said it has
made a 30 percent reduction restaurant-wide.
The companies say that in some cases, just removing added salt
or switching ingredients does the trick. Potassium chloride can
also substitute for common salt (sodium chloride), though too
much can cause a metallic taste.
Levels can vary widely. According to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, sodium in a slice of white bread ranges
from 80 milligrams to 230 milligrams. Three ounces of turkey
deli meat can have 450 milligrams to 1,050 milligrams.
Those ranges give health advocates hope.
“Those differences say to me that the companies that make the
highest-sodium products could certainly reduce levels to the
same as the companies that make the lower-sodium products,”
Jacobson says.
Still, the guidelines could be a hard sell. In recent years, congressional Republicans have fought the Obama administration
over efforts to require calorie labels on menus and make school
lunches healthier. When the administration attempted to create
voluntary guidelines for advertising junk food for children, the
industry balked and Republicans in Congress fought the idea,
prompting the administration to put them aside.
Other members of Congress are pushing the agency to act.
“As the clock ticks, America’s blood pressure, along with health
costs due to chronic disease, continues to rise,” says Sen. Tom
Harkin, chairman of the Senate committee that oversees the
FDA.

“Some people say, `Why don’t you pay them and end all this
right now?’” the president said. “It’s because there’s another
problem, even more serious. There’s another 7 percent who
would be able to demand payment from Argentina, right away
and now, of $15 billion. That’s more than half the reserves
in the Central Bank. As you can see, it’s not only absurd but
impossible that the country pays more than 50 percent of its
reserves in a single payment to its creditors.”
“It’s our obligation to take responsibility for paying our creditors, but not to become the victims of extortion by speculators,”
she said.
The plaintiffs said her government needs to settle now.
“The time has come for Argentina to enter into good-faith
negotiations with holdout bondholders,” said Richard Samp, an
attorney for the Washington Legal Foundation who has acted as
a spokesman for NML’s position throughout the case. “Argentina has expressed a desire to be permitted to re-enter financial
markets around the world. The only way that it can do so is by
coming to terms with its existing creditors.”

The food industry has pointed to a separate 2013 IOM report that
said there is no good evidence that eating sodium at very low
levels - below the 2,300 milligrams a day that the government
recommends - offers benefits. The government recommends that
those older than 50, African-Americans and people with high
blood pressure, diabetes or chronic kidney disease eat 1,500
milligrams a day. The American Heart Association recommends
that everyone eat no more than 1,500 milligrams a day.
Those pushing for sodium limits say it’s pointless to debate how
low the recommendations should go - Americans are still eating
around 3,400 milligrams a day.

But Fernandez also said repeatedly that her government is
ready to negotiate with the “speculators” who scooped up
Argentine junk bonds after the country’s 2001 default. Owners
of more than 92 percent of the nearly worthless debt agreed
to accept new bonds worth much less than their original face
value, but investors led by New York billionaire Paul Singer
held out and litigated instead, seeking to force Argentina to pay
cash in full plus interest.

People rally for an increase in the minimum wage on the Great Western Staircase at the
Capitol on Tuesday, June 17, 2014, in Albany, N.Y. Several hundred fast-food workers
and other low-wage employees from around New York gathered to pressure lawmakers
to raise the minimum wage from $8 to $10.10 an hour and let local cities raise it even
higher.

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- Dominique Mayfield makes $8.25 an hour
washing dishes and busing tables at a Syracuse brewpub. Shantel Walker makes $8.50 an hour at her pizzeria in New York City, where the rent
is more than double what it is in Syracuse. Two very different cities, but
nearly the same wage.
The economic differences between America’s big cities and elsewhere
have prompted leaders in Seattle, New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Oklahoma City and other cities to push to raise the minimum wage
within their borders.
The efforts are running into opposition from state lawmakers from both
parties and business groups who say a patchwork of minimum wages
could lead to a confusing and unequal business climate in which labor
costs would vary dramatically from city to city.
The minimum wage has emerged as perhaps the top issue of a newly
emboldened, urban liberal movement that in many places is led not by
governors or state lawmakers, but by local leaders backed by organized fast-food workers. After years of grappling with state and federal
budget cuts, mayors and city councils are pushing back against state and
federal officials who they say don’t understand the income inequality of
21st-century American cities.

Refusing to comply was “the best option” among a series
of grim alternatives that Cleary, Gottlieb, the U.S. law firm
representing Argentina in Washington, presented to Fernandez
ahead of the Supreme Court decision. That guidance suggested
Argentina should default on all its debts before negotiating in
order to gain more leverage.
well intended, it’s misguided,” said Cara Sullivan, a minimum wage
policy expert at ALEC. “In Seattle they raised it to $15, and right across
the city line it’s $5 less. It increases the cost of doing business for businesses in that city. You’re creating chaos from one business to the next.”
Members of the city council in Providence, Rhode Island, considered
raising the minimum wage from $8 to $15, but only for workers in the
city’s large hotels. In response, the Democratic leaders of the Rhode
Island General Assembly have moved to block the proposal by taking
away cities’ authority to set local minimums.
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, a Republican, signed legislation in April
that prohibits cities from setting their own wage after organized labor
groups suggested that Oklahoma City raise its wage from $7.25 an hour
- the federal minimum - to $10.10.
B.J. Marsh, a single mother in a suburb of Oklahoma City, says the
$7.25 she makes requires her to choose between eating or getting to
work. Marsh said her 7-year-old son began living with her father to save
on expenses and allow her to work.
“I don’t eat because I have to have gas in my car,” she said.
But supporters of Oklahoma’s new law said higher local minimum wages were likely to hurt the very low-income workers they were proposed
to help by raising food prices and reducing employment.

“So many people have been pushed out of this city,” said Seattle City
Councilman Nick Licata, who successfully pushed to raise the city’s
wage to $15, more than $5 higher than the state wage. “Local politicians
don’t have the luxury of not doing something. The state and federal
governments, they’ve been AWOL. They haven’t been engaged.”

“We have seen businesses flee from cities that have tried this in other
states,” said Republican House Speaker Jeff Hickman. “Artificially
inflating the minimum wage raises the price of everything from housing
and rental costs to a loaf of bread, and causes the loss of jobs which
means fewer opportunities for those working to feed their families.”

The fight to raise minimum wages has lawmakers in many states on the
defensive, arguing that higher wages will lead to reductions in hours
and jobs for low-income workers - and retail price increases that are
likely to hit them hardest. The business-backed American Legislative
Exchange Council argues that local minimum wages could lead to a race
to the bottom, where businesses locate in whatever city within a region
has the lowest starting wage.

In 2011 and 2012, four states passed laws keeping state minimum
wages from being higher than the federal wage. This year, 14 such bills
have been introduced, according to the National Conference of State
Legislatures.

“This is a debate that’s happening around the country, and although it’s

In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio and members of the City
Council are seeking authority to raise the local minimum wage to $15
continued on page 8

___________________________________________________________________

The Weekly News Digest, June 23, 2014

7

OBAMA SETTING ASIDE MASSIVE
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
P R E S E R V E

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Vowing to protect fragile marine life,
President Barack Obama acted Tuesday to create the world’s
largest ocean preserve by expanding a national monument his
predecessor established in waters thousands of miles from the
American mainland.

agency IHS Energy, said no one is currently exploring for oil or
gas in the area.
But conservation groups said it’s critical to take proactive steps
to safeguard underwater ecosystems even if direct human damage isn’t imminent.

The designation for a remote stretch of the Pacific Ocean marks
a major symbolic victory for environmentalists, who have
urged the president to take action on his own to protect the
planet as Congress turns its focus elsewhere. But the initiative
will have limited practical implications because little fishing or
drilling are taking place even without the new protections.
Protecting the world’s oceans and the vibrant ecosystems that
thrive deep under the surface is a task that’s bigger than any one
country but the U.S. must take the lead, Obama said, announcing the initiative during an ocean conservation conference.
“Let’s make sure that years from now we can look our children
in the eye and tell them that, yes, we did our part, we took
action, and we led the way toward a safer, more stable world,”
Obama said in a video message.
Obama hasn’t settled on the final boundaries for the expanded
Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, and will
solicit input from fishermen, scientists and conservation experts. Obama’s senior counselor, John Podesta, said that process
would start immediately and wrap up “in the very near future.”
President George W. Bush, a Republican, created the monument in 2009 by setting aside waters that encircle an array of
remote islands in the south-central Pacific, between Hawaii and
American Samoa.
Bush’s protections extend about 50 miles from the shore of the
U.S.-administered islands, but maritime law gives the U.S. control up to 200 nautical miles from the coast, forming the outer
limit of what Obama could protect using the 1906 Antiquities
Act.
Conservation groups urged Obama to be bold. If Obama opts

D R .
O N

O Z
W E

“These are fairly long distances from any ports, and they’re
very expensive to get to,” said Lance Morgan of the Marine
Conservation Institute. “Still, we don’t know what all the future
uses are going to be.”

President Barack Obama speaking in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington.
Vowing to protect fragile marine life, President Barack Obama moved Tuesday to create
the world’s largest ocean preserve by expanding a national monument his predecessor
created in waters thousands of miles away from the American mainland. The expansion
marks a major symbolic victory for environmentalists, who have urged the president to
take action on his own to protect the planet as Congress turns its focus elsewhere. But
the initiative will have limited practical implications for a remote stretch of the Pacific
Ocean where little fishing or drilling is taking place even without the new protections

for the full 200 miles, conservation groups said, he could
roughly double the amount of ocean that’s protected worldwide.
A geographic analysis by the Pew Charitable Trusts estimated
Obama could protect more than 780,000 square miles - almost
nine times what Bush set aside - and far more if he included the
waters around other U.S. islands in the Pacific Ocean.
“Our oceans are feeling the strain of human activity from
increased acidification, overfishing, and pollution, and we need
to take bold action to protect this vital natural resource,” said
Carol Browner, the former Environmental Protection Agency
administrator.
But in practical terms, the expanded sanctuary will likely have
a modest impact.
Very little commercial fishing is conducted around the islands.
And Bob Fryklund, chief upstream strategist for analytics

Republicans reacted with similar indignation Tuesday and
accused Obama of overreaching.
Rep. John Fleming, R-La., who chairs the House subpanel dealing with oceans and wildlife, said Obama was invoking climate
change even though the century-old Antiquities Act wasn’t
intended to deal with global warming.
“This is clearly way outside of his constitutional boundaries,”
Fleming said in an interview. “It’s just another step in the
wrong direction for our imperial president.”
In another environmental move, Obama launched a task force
to combat black-market fishing and seafood fraud, in which
seafood products are mislabeled to hide their origin. One-fifth
of wild marine fish caught each year are considered to be part
of the black market, the White House said. The black market
for fish cost the legitimate fishing industry $23 billion. The
presidential memorandum calls for the task force to submit
recommendations within six months.

S C O L D E D
A T
H E A R I N G
I G H T
L O S S
S C A M S
pills and cure-alls to millions of Americans desperate to lose
weight.
Oz appeared before the Senate’s consumer protection panel and was
scolded by Chairman Claire McCaskill for claims he made about
weight-loss aids on his TV show, “The Dr. Oz Show.”
Oz, a cardiothoracic surgeon, acknowledged that his language about
green coffee and other supplements has been “flowery” and promised to publish a list of specific products he thinks can help America
shed pounds and get healthy - beyond eating less and moving more.
On his show, he never endorsed specific companies or brands but
more generally praised some supplements as fat busters.
McCaskill took Oz to task for a 2012 show in which he proclaimed
that green coffee extract was a “magic weight loss cure for every
body type.”

Dr. Mehmet C. Oz, chairman and Professor of Surgery, Columbia University College
of Physicians and Surgeons, testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, June 17,
2014 , before the Senate subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and
Insurance hearing to examine protecting consumers from false and deceptive advertising

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Under pressure from Congress, celebrity
Dr. Mehmet Oz on Tuesday offered to help “drain the swamp” of
unscrupulous marketers using his name to peddle so-called miracle

4 I N J U R E D
T O S P E A K

Obama has increasingly invoked his own authority to impose
environmental protections during his second term, wary of
ceding control to lawmakers who have shown no appetite for
major legislation to fight climate change and other ecological
challenges. Earlier this month Obama unveiled unprecedented
pollution limits on power plants, enraging Republicans and
even some Democrats.

“I get that you do a lot of good on your show,” McCaskill told Oz,
“but I don’t get why you need to say this stuff because you know
it’s not true.”
Oz insisted he believes in the supplements he talks about on his

C I R C U S A C R O B AT S
A B O U T A C C I D E N T

In this May 2, 2014 file photo provided by Frank Caprio, performers
hang during an aerial hair-hanging
stunt at the Ringling Brothers and
Barnum and Bailey Circus in Providence, R.I. Seven of the eight acrobats who fell to the Dunkin’ Donuts
Center floor during that same stunt
in Providence two days later have
hired a Chicago-based law firm to

BOSTON (AP) -- Four
circus acrobats injured
during a hair-hanging
stunt were expected to
discuss the accident that sent them plummeting to the ground
during a live performance in Rhode Island.
The four were to speak on Tuesday at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston, although that number could change
depending on their conditions, said their lawyer, Michael
Krzak.
Eight acrobats were injured during a May 4 performance of
the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in Providence when the apparatus from which they were suspended
fell, sending them plummeting to the ground. Most have not

spoken publicly about the accident and their injuries.
Krzak said on Monday that seven of the women recently hired
his firm, Chicago-based Clifford Law Offices. The eighth acrobat has hired her own local lawyer, he said.

show as short-term crutches, and even has his family try them. But
there’s no long-term miracle pill out there without diet and exercise,
he said.
Within weeks of Oz’s comments about green coffee - which refers
to the unroasted seeds or beans of coffee - a Florida-based operation
began marketing a dietary supplement called Pure Green Coffee,
with claims that the chlorogenic acid found in the coffee beans
could help people lose 17 pounds and cut body fat by 16 percent in
22 weeks.
The company, according to federal regulators, featured footage from
“The Dr. Oz Show,” to sell its supplement. Oz has no association
with the company and received no money from sales.
Last month, the Federal Trade Commission sued the sellers behind
Pure Green Coffee and accused them of making bogus claims and
deceiving consumers.
The weight-loss industry is an area where consumers are particularly vulnerable to fraud, Mary Koelbel Engle, an associate director
at the FTC, testified at the Senate hearing. She said the agency conducted a consumer survey in 2011 and found that more consumers
were victims of fraudulent weight-loss products than of any of the
other specific frauds covered in the survey.
Oz stressed during the hearing that he has never endorsed specific
supplements or received money from the sale of supplements. Nor
has he allowed his image to be used in ads for supplements, he said.
“If you see my name, face or show in any type of ad, email, or other
circumstance,” Oz testified, “it’s illegal” - and not anything he has
endorsed.

While the firm has not yet filed any lawsuits, he said it is conducting an in-depth investigation into what happened. He said
the firm is waiting to get access to several pieces of evidence,
including a broken carabiner clip, which held up the mechanism that suspended the women and which local investigators
said snapped into three pieces.
The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration is
still investigating the accident.
Samantha Pitard, 23, a native of Champaign, Illinois, who was
less severely injured than the others with fractures on her spine
and a head injury, is among those who hired Krzak. She told
The Associated Press last month that every circus performer
knows they are risking their lives every time they perform, and
it’s a risk they take to make people happy. She said she hoped
to return to the ring someday.

Children Incorporated
4205 Dover Road

www.childrenincorporated.

8

The Weekly News Digest, June 23, 2014

___________________________________________________________________

U S F O R C E S M O V E I N T O I R A Q
W I T H
S E C U R I T Y
M I S S I O N
es were under consideration. But spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden
said that while Obama would not send troops back into combat,
“He has asked his national security team to prepare a range of
other options that could help support Iraqi security forces.”

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nearly 300 armed American forces are
being positioned in and around Iraq to help secure U.S. assets as
President Barack Obama nears a decision on an array of options
for combating fast-moving Islamic insurgents, including airstrikes
or a contingent of special forces.

It’s not clear how quickly the special forces could arrive in Iraq.
It’s also unknown whether they would remain in Baghdad or be
sent to the nation’s north, where the Sunni Muslim insurgency
has captured large swaths of territory ringing Baghdad, the capital of the Shiite-led government.

The U.S. and Iran also held an initial discussion on how the
longtime foes might cooperate to ease the threat from the al-Qaida-linked militants that have swept through Iraq. Still, the White
House ruled out the possibility that Washington and Tehran might
coordinate military operations in Iraq.
Obama met with his national security team Monday evening to
discuss options for stopping the militants known as the Islamic
State of Iraq and the Levant. Officials said the president has
made no final decisions on how aggressively the U.S. might get
involved in Iraq, though the White House continued to emphasize
that any military engagement remained contingent on the government in Baghdad making political reforms.
Still, there were unmistakable signs of Americans returning to a
country from which the U.S. military fully withdrew more than
two years ago. Obama notified Congress that up to 275 troops
would be sent to Iraq to provide support and security for U.S. personnel and the American Embassy in Baghdad. The soldiers - 170
of which have already arrived in Iraq - were armed for combat,
though Obama has insisted he does not intend for U.S. forces to
be engaged in direct fighting.
“We are hard-wired into their system,” the fledgling democracy
that America helped institute, said Ryan Crocker, a former U.S.
ambassador to Baghdad. “We can’t walk away from it.”
About 100 additional forces are being put on standby, most likely
in Kuwait, and could be used for airfield management, security
and logistics support, officials said.
Separately, three U.S. officials said the White House was considering sending a contingent of special forces soldiers to Iraq.
Their limited mission - which has not yet been approved - would

Shiite tribal fighters raise their weapons and chant slogans against the al-Qaida-inspired
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the northwest Baghdad’s Shula neighborhood, Iraq, Monday, June 16, 2014. Sunni militants captured a key northern Iraqi town
along the highway to Syria early on Monday, compounding the woes of Iraq’s Shiite-led
government a week after it lost a vast swath of territory to the insurgents in the country’s
north.

focus on training and advising beleaguered Iraqi troops, many
of whom have fled their posts across the nation’s north and west
as the al-Qaida-inspired insurgency has advanced in the worst
threat to the country since American troops left in 2011.
Taken together, the developments suggest a willingness by
Obama to send Americans into a collapsing security situation
in order to quell the brutal fighting in Iraq before it morphs into
outright war.
If the U.S. were to deploy an additional team of special forces,
the mission almost certainly would be small. One U.S. official
said it could be up to 100 special forces soldiers. It also could
be authorized only as an advising and training mission - meaning the soldiers would work closely with Iraqi forces that are
fighting the insurgency but would not officially be considered
combat troops.

A customer enjoys a coffee at Starbucks in Miami. It turns out Starbucks isn’t contributing any upfront scholarship money to an online college degree program it introduced on
Monday, June 16, 2014.

NEW YORK (AP) -- The scholarship portion of a new education
program Starbucks is offering to help workers pay for an online
degree consists entirely of a discount from Arizona State University and not money from the chain.

The Seattle-based company this week unveiled a benefit that is
designed to let college juniors and seniors earn a degree from ASU
at no cost. For the freshman and sophomores years, workers would
pay a reduced tuition. Workers who are admitted to ASU could
pick from 40 degree programs, and wouldn’t be required to stay
with Starbucks after they earned their degrees.
A major aspect of the program is an upfront scholarship Starbucks
said is an investment between itself and Arizona State University.
When asked how much of that scholarship portion the company
is providing, Starbucks initially said financial terms weren’t being
disclosed.
Following the announcement, however, Arizona State University
President Michael Crow told The Chronicle of Higher Education
that Starbucks is not contributing any money toward the scholarship portion. Instead, Arizona State will essentially charge workers
less than the sticker price for online tuition.
Starbucks said Thursday that the scholarship is a reduced tuition
rate. It estimates the reduction in tuition would average about
$6,500 over two years to cover tuition of $30,000.
To cover the remainder in the freshman and sophomore years,
workers would apply for federal aid, such as Pell grants, and pay
for the rest either out of pocket or by taking out loans. Starbucks
would bear no costs in those years.
For the junior and senior years, Starbucks would reimburse workers for whatever tuition they had to cover either upfront or through
loans, once they completed 21 credits.
Matt Ryan, chief strategy officer for Starbucks, said on Thursday
that for a worker’s junior and senior years, the company could
potentially cover up to 58 percent of the tuition, in cases where

The troops would fall under the authority of the U.S. ambassador
in Baghdad and would not be authorized to engage in combat, another U.S. official said. Their mission would be “non-operational
training” of both regular and counterterrorism units, which the
military has in the past interpreted to mean training on military
bases, the official said.
However, all U.S. troops are allowed to defend themselves in Iraq
if they are under attack.
The three U.S. officials all spoke on condition of anonymity
because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the plans by
name.
Obama made the end of the war in Iraq one of his signature
campaign issues, and has touted the U.S. military withdrawal in
December 2011 as one of his top foreign policy successes. But he
has been caught over the past week between Iraqi officials pleading for help - as well as Republicans blaming him for the loss of
a decade’s worth of gains in Iraq - and his anti-war Democratic
political base, which is demanding that the U.S. stay out of the
fight.
The crisis has sparked a rare alignment of interests between the
U.S. and Iran, which wants to preserve Iraq’s Shiite-dominated
government. The U.S. and Iran are engaged in sensitive nuclear negotiations and used a round of talks Monday in Vienna,
Austria, to hold a separate bilateral discussion on Iraq.
While the U.S. and Iran have similar short-term goals in Iraq,
they have different long-term aims. The United States would like
to see an inclusive, representative democracy take hold in Iraq,
while predominantly Shiite Iran is more focused on protecting
Iraq’s Shiite population and bolstering its own position as a
regional power against powerful Sunni Arab states in the Gulf.

If workers did qualify for grants, he said Starbucks could be
responsible for very little, if anything. He noted that workers financial situations can vary greatly.

Crocker said that Iran should “use all the influence” possible
to keep the al-Qaida-style Islamic group from exacerbating the
sectarian strife in Iraq.

Laurel Harper, a Starbucks spokeswoman, said previously that the
company’s analysis with ASU found most of its workers would
qualify for federal Pell grants.

Appearing Tuesday on “CBS This Morning,” Crocker said if he’d
have Secretary of State John Kerry “on a plane right now for
Baghdad.”

A representative for Arizona State wasn’t immediately available for
comment.

“I would have liked to have seen more sustained, high-level diplomatic engagement with the Iraqis,” Crocker said. He said that
for the country to have any change at survival there must quickly
be a show of “Kurdish, Shia and Sunni” solidarity.

The program, which has been widely praised because education
benefits are rare for low-wage workers, brought attention to the
struggles people face in paying for college. It is unusual because
workers can pick from 40 different degree programs and aren’t
required to stay with Starbucks after they complete their degrees.
It’s not clear how much the program will end up costing Starbucks.
But Ryan said the company expects that it will “for sure” be a
much bigger investment than its current tuition reimbursement
program, which will be phased out by 2015.
That program offers up to $1,000 a year to take classes at City
University of Seattle or Strayer University, with no limit on the
number of years they can apply. Since it was rolled out in October
2011, Starbucks said the program has cost it $6.5 million.
Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of EdVisors.com, a website about paying for college, said the program could benefit all parties involved.
Workers could get a chance at a degree from Arizona State University at a reduced rate. Arizona State could get a revenue boost
from federal aid and out-of-pocket costs workers and Starbucks
later pays. And Starbucks could attract a better pool of workers and
burnish its corporate image.
Starbucks said its workers are “embracing this benefit with
overwhelming excitement; ASU has seen an enormous uptick in
interest.”

Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan, chairman of the
House Intelligence Committee, said Washington must move
immediately “to disrupt their ability to continue their operations.”
He said the insurgents are holding sway currently and that “all
the ingredients are going into the stew. We see it happening on
our watch.”
Appearing on CNN, Rogers said he believes there still is time for
the United States to make a difference, but that Washington must
move now.
While the White House continues to review its options, Iran’s
military leaders are starting to step into the breach.
The commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force, Gen. Ghasem Soleimani, was in Iraq on Monday and consulting with the government there on how to stave off insurgents’ gains. Iraqi security
officials said the U.S. government was notified in advance of the
visit by Soleimani, whose forces are a secretive branch of Iran’s
Revolutionary Guard that in the past has organized Shiite militias
to target U.S. troops in Iraq and, more recently, was involved in
helping Syria’s President Bashar Assad in his fight against Sunni
rebels.

M I N I M U M

WA G E

continued from page 6

- nearly double the state’s $8 minimum. State law doesn’t currently
permit cities to set their own minimums, and while Democratic Gov.
Andrew Cuomo first warned the idea would lead to a “chaotic” business
environment, he now supports a proposal to raise the wage to $10.10
and let cities impose a minimum up to 30 percent higher.
Restaurant owners and business groups have opposed the plan, and on
Thursday it appeared state lawmakers would adjourn without voting
on the measure. The state’s minimum wage is already set to increase to
$8.75 at the end of this year and to $9 at the end of 2015.
For Shantel Walker, the pizzeria worker in Brooklyn, the proposal
would mean nearly $5 more per hour. Walker went to Albany last month
to rally for a higher minimum wage outside a McDonald’s at the Capitol. She said it makes no sense that fast food workers in New York City
are held to the same minimum wage as those upstate.
If we have to do this every week, t

BAGHDAD (AP) -- Possible signs emerged Tuesday of reprisal
sectarian slaughter of Sunnis in Iraq, as police said pro-government Shiite militiamen killed nearly four dozen detainees
after insurgents tried to storm a jail and free them northeast of
Baghdad.

On Monday, the Islamic State captured the strategically located
city of Tal Afar near the Syrian border, a move that strengthens its
plans to carve out a state-like enclave on both sides of the border.

The Iraqi military insisted the Sunni inmates were killed when
the attackers shelled the facility outside the city of Baqouba.
Neither account could be independently confirmed, but a local
morgue official said many of the detainees had bullet wounds to
the head and chest.
The allegation of Shiite killings of Sunnis was the first hint of the
beginnings of a return to sectarian warfare that nearly tore the
country apart. Sunni militants also have been accused of atrocities in areas they have captured over the past week.
The insurgents were repelled, but the fighting around the jail was
the closest to Baghdad since the al-Qaida breakaway group the
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant began its lightning advance,
seizing several key cities in the Sunni heartland in northern Iraq.
There were conflicting details about the fighting in the al-Kattoun
district near Baqouba, the capital of Diyala province and one of
the bloodiest battlefields of the U.S.-led war, and on how the detainees were killed. The city is 60 kilometers (40 miles) northeast
of the Iraqi capital.
Three police officers said the police station, which has a small
jail, came under attack on Monday night by Islamic militants who
tried to free the detainees, mostly suspected Sunni militants.
The three said Shiite militiamen, who rushed to defend the facility, killed the detainees at close range. A morgue official in Baqouba said many of the slain detainees had bullet wounds to the head
and chest. All four officials spoke on condition of anonymity
fearing for their own safety.
However, Iraq’s chief military spokesman Lt. Gen. Qassim
al-Moussawi, told The Associated Press that 52 detainees who
were held at the station in al-Kattoun died when the attackers
from the Islamic State shelled it with mortars.
The group is known to be active in Diyala, a volatile province
with a mix of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds and where Shiite militiamen are deployed alongside government forces. Sunni militants
have for years targeted security forces and Shiite civilians in the
province, which abuts the Iranian border.
Nine of the attackers were killed, al-Moussawi said.
The conflicting reports could not immediately be reconciled,
but if the version of events provided by the policemen and the
coroner is independently verified, then the incident would be an
example of the sectarian strife and atrocities that Iraq’s ongoing
crisis could yield.

Iraqi military officials said some 400 elite troops and volunteers
who have joined security forces were flown to an airport outside
Tal Afar on Monday, but were immediately pinned down by
heavy artillery shelling from the militants.

Iraqi men flash victory signs as they leave the main recruiting center to join the Iraqi
army in Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday, June 17, 2014, after authorities urged Iraqis to help
battle insurgents. Hundreds of young Iraqi men gripped by religious and nationalistic
fervor streamed into volunteer centers across Baghdad Saturday, answering a call by the
country’s top Shiite cleric to join the fight against Sunni militants advancing in the north

Iraq has been in danger of sliding back to the wholesale Shiite-Sunni bloodletting of 2006 and 2007 since Sunni militants
seized at least one city and significant parts of the countryside in
Anbar province west of Baghdad early this year.
Continuous bombings blamed on Sunni militants in Baghdad and
elsewhere, and targeted assassinations of members of both communities have deepened fears of outright sectarian warfare.
During the United States’ eight-year presence in Iraq, American
forces acted as a buffer between the two Islamic sects, though
with limited success. The U.S. military withdrew at the end
of 2011, but it is now being pulled back in - albeit so far on a
limited basis.
Nearly 300 armed American forces are being positioned in and
around Iraq to help secure U.S. assets as President Barack Obama
nears a decision on an array of options for combating the Islamic
militants, including airstrikes or a contingent of special forces.
The White House has continued to emphasize that any military
engagement remained contingent on the government in Baghdad
making political reforms.
The U.S. and Iran, Iraq’s Shiite neighbor and close ally, also held
an initial discussion on how the longtime foes might cooperate to
ease the threat from the al-Qaida-linked militants that have swept
through Iraq. Still, the White House ruled out the possibility that
Washington and Tehran might coordinate military operations in
Iraq.
The Islamic State has vowed to march to Baghdad, and the Shiite
holy cities of Karbala and Najaf in the worst threat to Iraq’s stability since U.S. troops left. The three cities are home to some of
the most revered Shiite shrines. The Islamic State has also tried
to capture the city of Samarra north of Baghdad, home to another
major Shiite shrine.
The push by the Islamic State’s militants has largely been

F L O R I D A M O R E V U L N E R A B L E
T O T W I S T E R S T H A N M I D W E S T
An American flag flying over the
remains of a tornado-ravaged
neighborhood in Tuscaloosa, Ala.,
a month after a killer storms in
Alabama. Oklahoma and Kansas
may have the reputation as tornado hotspots, but Florida and the
rest of the Southeast are far more
vulnerable to killer twisters, a new
analysis shows. (

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Oklahoma and Kansas may have the
reputation as tornado hot spots, but Florida and the rest of
the Southeast are far more vulnerable to killer twisters, a new
analysis shows.
Florida leads the country in deaths calculated per mile a
tornado races along the ground, followed by Tennessee, North
Carolina, Ohio and Alabama, according to an analysis of the
past three decades by the federal Southeast Regional Climate
Center at the University of North Carolina.
That’s because Florida is No. 1 in so many factors that make
tornadoes more risky: mobile homes, the elderly and the poor,
said center director Charles Konrad II, who headed the new
work.
“People are just much more vulnerable in a mobile home than
they are in a regular home,” Konrad said.
Florida’s death rate of 2.4 deaths per 100 miles of tornado
ground track is more than two-and-a-half times that of Oklahoma and nearly five times that of Kansas.
Along with Florida, Dixie Alley - including Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky,
western parts of the Carolinas - is where “more people die
from tornadoes” than anywhere else in the world, said Conrad.

Three years ago, a four-day outbreak of more than 200 tornadoes killed 316 people in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee,
Virginia and Georgia.
Florida doesn’t get as many tornadoes as Oklahoma and they
aren’t as strong, but when Florida does get them, “people
are especially vulnerable,” Konrad said. He presented the
research at an American Meteorological Society meeting in
Colorado this week.
Konrad’s work makes sense and fits with earlier research on
tornado fatalities, said Florida State University meteorology
professor James Elsner and Barb Mayes Boustead, a National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration meteorologist and
tornado chaser.
Visibility is another problem for tornadoes in the Southeast.
Because of atmospheric conditions, the region tends to get
more tornadoes at night, making them harder to see, Konrad said. It also means some people may be asleep and miss
warnings.
The South also has more trees and buildings to block the view
of oncoming tornadoes, Konrad said. And they also tend to
come from low-hanging clouds, making them harder to see.
Florida tends to get tornadoes more in the winter, while the
Southeast tornado season is February through April, Konrad
said. The Midwest generally sees them in the spring and
summer.
This year, which is so far unusually quiet, seven tornadoes
have killed 35 people, 32 of them in the Southeast, including
16 in Arkansas and 11 in Mississippi.

D o n t Te x t a n d D r i v e

In Baghdad on Tuesday, a sticky bomb attached to a car exploded, killing three passengers and wounding 11 bystanders, according to police and hospital officials, who spoke on condition of
anonymity because they are not authorized to talk to the media.

M E LT I N G A R C T I C
continued from page 1

This week Google, with a driverless car and Web-surfing eyeglasses
under its belt, has given The Associated Press an early look at how
it’s trying to change the gender disparity in its own workforce, and in
the pipeline of potential workers, by launching a campaign Thursday
called “Made with Code.”
The initiative begins with an introductory video of girls- silly, serious
and brave - meeting President Obama, painting over graffiti and
goofing around. The narrator says: “You are a girl who understands
bits exist to be assembled. When you learn to code, you can assemble
anything that you see missing. And in so doing, you will fix something, or change something, or invent something, or run something,
and maybe that’s how you will play your bit in this world.”
A website features female role-model techies who write software
to design cool fabrics or choreograph dances. There are simple, fun
coding lessons aimed at girls and a directory of coding programs
for girls. The search giant is also offering $50 million in grants and
partnering with Girls Who Code, a nonprofit launched in 2012 that
runs summer coding institutes for girls, including the one that helped
focus Navarro’s passion for technology.
A preview test run of Google’s online coding lessons this week was
deemed “awesome” by Carmen Ramirez y Porter, 11. “It’s not very
complicated. It’s easy and fun and really cool to see how it turns out
when you finish,” she said.
National Center for Women & Information Technology CEO Lucy
Sanders, a leading advocate for women in computer sciences, sees
the Made With Code initiative as a pivotal moment in what has
been a long-term challenge of getting more girl geeks growing up in
America.
“It used to be that as a computing community we didn’t really talk
about gender issues. But now we’re really pulling together, from corporations and startups to nonprofits and universities,” Sanders said.
“I’m very optimistic.”
There’s plenty of room for change.
Female participation in computer sciences has dropped to 18 percent,
down from 37 percent in the 1980s, and only seven percent of U.S.
venture capital deals go to women founders and CEOs. Just 20 percent of the 30,000 students who took the Advanced Placement computer science test last year were girls, according to a College Board
analysis, which showed no girls at all took the test in Mississippi,
Montana or Wyoming.
YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, one of the earliest Google employees,
points to societal and economic drawbacks if women are not participating in the booming tech economy.
Also, she said, “I miss having more women counterparts.”
Tech firms are overwhelming male - Yahoo on Tuesday released a report showing 62 percent of its global employees are men. At Google,
about 70 percent of the roughly 44,000 people it employs throughout
the world are men. This year, the search giant commissioned a nationwide study to find out why so few women pursue technology careers,
asking 1,600 people about whether they were encouraged to study
computer sciences and had opportunities to learn to code.
Their findings, shared with the AP this week in advance of public release: Girls have little exposure to technology and computer sciences.
That doesn’t mean they’re not interested, however. If parents, friends
and teachers encourage their daughters to pursue computer sciences,
schools offer more courses and more role models step forward, the
field can be leveled.
But to capture girls, it’s got to be fun.
That’s the plan for a “Made With Code” kick-off event in New York
Thursday for 150 girls, where indie rockers Icona Pop will perform
and coders will demo how they make everything from animated
movies to designer fabrics with software. Actress Mindy Kaling, who
is the event’s master of ceremonies, said she fights gender bias in
Hollywood, but when a techie friend told her about Silicon Valley’s
gender gap “it was staggering.”
“Just as television and movies need to reflect their audience, I think
it’s important that people who create technology reflect the diversity
of people who use them,” she said.
Chelsea Clinton, who is representing the Clinton Foundation at
Thursday’s event, said she got her own first computer in 1987 from
Santa Claus.
continued from page 6

I R A Q :
S I G N S
E M E R G E
O F
R E P R I S A L S E C TA R I A N K I L L I N G S
The bodies were taken to the Baqouba morgue, where an official
said most had gunshot wounds to the head and chest. One detainee,
however, survived and was taken to the hospital.

BAGHDAD (AP) -- Signs emerged Tuesday of a reprisal sectarian
slaughter of Sunnis in Iraq, as police said pro-government Shiite
militiamen killed nearly four dozen detainees after insurgents tried
to storm the jail northeast of Baghdad.

Police later arrived at the hospital and took the wounded man
away, said a hospital official.

A local morgue official said many of the detainees had bullet
wounds to the head and chest, though the Iraqi military insisted
the Sunni inmates were killed by mortar shells in the attack on the
facility outside the city of Baqouba.

The police officers, the hospital and morgue officials all spoke on
condition of anonymity, fearing for their own safety.
A different account was provided to The Associated Press by Iraq’s
chief military spokesman, Lt. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi. He said
52 detainees who were held at the station in al-Kattoun died when
the attackers from the Islamic State shelled it with mortars.

In Baghdad, meanwhile, the bullet-riddled bodies of four men in
their late 20s or early 30s, presumably Sunnis, were found at different locations in the Shiite neighborhood of Benouk, according to
police and morgue officials who spoke on condition of anonymity
because they were not authorized to talk with the media.
The discovery was a grim reminder of a dark chapter in Iraq’s
history when nearly a decade ago the city woke up virtually every
morning to find dozens of bodies dumped in the streets, trash heaps
or in the Tigris river with torture marks or gunshot wounds.
The allegation of Shiite killings of Sunnis near Baqouba and in
Baghdad were the first hints of the beginnings of a return to sectarian warfare that nearly tore the country apart in 2006 and 2007.
Sunni militants also have been accused of atrocities - an apparent
attempt to provoke Shiite militias into revenge attacks that would
strengthen the hand of an al-Qaida splinter group within Iraq’s
Sunni community.
A U.N. commission warned Tuesday that “a regional war in the
Middle East draws ever closer” as Sunni insurgents advance across
Iraq to control areas bridging the Iraq-Syria frontier. It said Iraq’s
turmoil will have “violent repercussions” in Syria, most dangerously the rise of sectarian violence as “a direct consequence of the
dominance of extremist groups.”
During the United States’ eight-year presence in Iraq, American
forces acted as a buffer between the two Islamic sects, though with
limited success. The U.S. military withdrew at the end of 2011, but
it is now being pulled back in - albeit so far in far fewer numbers.

Iraqi men flash victory signs as they leave the main recruiting center to join the Iraqi
army in Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday, June 17, 2014, after authorities urged Iraqis to help
battle insurgents. Hundreds of young Iraqi men gripped by religious and nationalistic
fervor streamed into volunteer centers across Baghdad Saturday, answering a call by the
country’s top Shiite cleric to join the fight against Sunni militants advancing in the north.

The fighting around the jail was the closest to Baghdad since the
al-Qaida breakaway group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
began its lightning advance, seizing several key northern cities in
the Sunni heartland last week.
There were conflicting details about the clashes in the al-Kattoun
district near Baqouba, the capital of Diyala province and one of
the bloodiest battlefields of the U.S.-led war, and on how the detainees were killed. The city is 60 kilometers (40 miles) northeast
of the Iraqi capital.
Officers said the local police station, which has a small jail, came
under attack Monday night by Sunni militants who arrived in two
sedan cars to free the detainees. The militants fired rocket-propelled grenades on the building before opening fire with assault
rifles.
A SWAT team accompanied by Shiite militiamen rushed to scene
and asked the local policemen to leave, according to the officers.
When the policemen later returned to the station, they found all
those in the detention cells dead.

B I T C O I N
F A C E S
B I G G E S T
THREAT YET: A MINER TAKEOVER
painstakingly produced by computers churning through millions
of calculations. Bitcoin transactions are recorded in a virtual
public ledger, known as the blockchain. Miners are in charge
of maintaining the blockchain. As their computers perform the
calculations to do that, the process rewards them with newly
minted bitcoins.
A single mining computer might take years to produce a single
block of coins, and there’s no way to know when that might
happen. In pools, miners divide the bitcoins they create among
themselves in proportion to the work done, providing with them
with a steadier stream of income. The pools aren’t created to
threaten the trust placed in bitcoin; it’s a side effect of the pool’s
growth.
A man arrives for the Inside Bitcoins conference and trade show in New York. The Bitcoin
digital currency system is in danger of losing its credibility as an independent payment
system because of the growing power of a group that runs the some of the computers
behind it.

NEW YORK (AP) -- The Bitcoin digital currency system is
in danger of losing its credibility as an independent payment
system because of the growing power of a group that runs some
of the computers behind it.

In recent weeks, a British-based “mining pool” called GHash
has amassed nearly half of the Bitcoin computing power and has
briefly gone over 50 percent. Miners operate the computers that
keep track of bitcoins and create additional coins.
Miners pool their computing power to spread the financial risk
of their operations. If GHash amasses more than half of the computing power devoted to Bitcoin, it could in theory control the
flow of transactions, freeze people out of the network and keep
all future bitcoins for itself.
Although GHash says it’s committed to preserving Bitcoin as
a trustable technology, the mere fact that one player can amass
majority control could undermine trust in the currency, which is
worth only what people are willing to pay for it.
“The entire premise of bitcoin relies on the fact that no single
authority would control the majority of the mining power,” said
Ittay Eyal, a Cornell University researcher who studies bitcoin
vulnerabilities.
The value of bitcoins has fallen 6 percent in a week to around
$600 as the threat posed by GHash has become clearer, although
the decline is within the range of normal fluctuations for the
volatile currency.
Bitcoins allow people to send money over the Internet without
going through banks. This means transaction costs are low, but
it also means they’re useful for illegal activities such as money
laundering and drug sales. Bitcoins have also become a target
of speculators betting on a continued run-up in the currency. Its
value has grown a hundredfold over two years.
From a technical standpoint, bitcoins are sequences of numbers,

GHash is controlled by a British company, CEX.IO Ltd. The
company said in a statement Monday that it wants to protect
Bitcoin, but it doesn’t want to turn away people from the pool
or impose other temporary solutions to back away from the 50
percent threshold.
GHash said it’s arranging a “round table” meeting of key players
in the Bitcoin system in July to “with the aim of discussing and
negotiating collectively ways to address the decentralisation of
mining as an industry.”
Eyal said the problem needs to be fixed in “a very drastic fashion” to reduce the incentive to create pools. That will probably
with an update to the software the underlies the system, he said.
continued from page 9

“Ultimately computer science is helping to create the future,” she
said. “So when we think about the future, we know we need to be
doing more in this country and around the world to ensure that girls
and women see computer sciences as real, viable options for them.”

Nine of the attackers were killed, al-Moussawi said.
The Islamic State is known to be active in Diyala, a volatile
province with a mix of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds and where Shiite
militiamen are deployed alongside government forces. Sunni militants have for years targeted security forces and Shiite civilians in
the province, which abuts the Iranian border.
The Islamic State has vowed to march to Baghdad, and the Shiite
holy cities of Karbala and Najaf in the worst threat to Iraq’s
stability since U.S. troops left. The three cities are home to some
of the most revered Shiite shrines. The Islamic State has also tried
to capture the city of Samarra north of Baghdad, home to another
major Shiite shrine.
Nearly 300 armed American forces are being positioned in and
around Iraq to help secure U.S. assets as President Barack Obama
nears a decision on an array of options for combating the Islamic
militants, including airstrikes or a contingent of special forces.
The White House has continued to emphasize that any military
engagement remained contingent on the government in Baghdad
making political reforms.
The U.S. and Iran, Iraq’s Shiite neighbor and close ally, also held
an initial discussion on how the longtime foes might cooperate to
ease the threat from the al-Qaida-linked militants that have swept
through Iraq. Still, the White House ruled out the possibility that
Washington and Tehran might coordinate military operations in
Iraq.
The push by the Islamic State’s militants has largely been unchecked as Iraqi troops and police melted away and surrendered in
the onslaught on the city of Mosul and Trikrit, Saddam Hussein’s
hometown.
On Monday, the Islamic State captured the strategically located
city of Tal Afar near the Syrian border, a move that strengthens its
plans to carve out a state-like enclave on both sides of the border.
Iraqi military officials said some 400 elite troops and volunteers
who have joined security forces were flown to an airport outside
Tal Afar on Monday, but were immediately pinned down by heavy
artillery shelling from the militants.
Iraq has been in danger of sliding back to wholesale Shiite-Sunni bloodletting since Sunni militants seized at least one city and
significant parts of the countryside in Anbar province west of
Baghdad early this year.
Continuous bombings blamed on Sunni militants in Baghdad and
elsewhere, and targeted assassinations of members of both communities have deepened fears of outright sectarian warfare.
In Baghdad on Tuesday, a suicide bomber set off his explosives
outside a central Baghdad store that sells military uniforms, killing
seven people and wounding 22, according to police and hospital
officials.
Elsewhere in the capital, a sticky bomb attached to a car exploded,
killing three passengers and wounding 11 bystanders, according to
police and hospital officials.
The officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they
were not authorized to talk to the media.

Entrepreneur Dez White wasn’t necessarily pursuing a tech career
when she asked a patron at her family’s restaurant to teach her to
write software. She just had an idea for an app and wanted to make
it.
“It was very hard for me to get my head around it,” White said. “I
didn’t go to Stanford for code.”
Today, she hires coders for her firm Goinvis, which sells privacy
apps that allows users to send texts that self-destruct at a set time and
emails that disappear from an inbox after they’re opened.
But in addition to her day job, as a successful female African-American entrepreneur, she realizes she needs to be a mentor as well.
“I think young women don’t even realize computer sciences are an
option. It’s not laid out like nursing and social work,” she said.
Next year, she’s planning to organize a technology retreat for high
school girls, and she tries to hire women for her growing company.
“It’s hard. We have to really look. Their numbers are very, very
slim,” she said.

Children Incorporated
4205 Dover Road

www.childrenincorporated.

___________________________________________________________________

B R O O K S ’
G O A L
J U S T
L I K E
I N

The Weekly News Digest, June 23, 2014

11

H A P P E N E D
A
D R E A M

“I told some teammates that I dreamed that I scored in the 80th
minute and we won the game,” he said. “And now it was the 86th
minute and we won.”

substitute on the 2010 World Cup team. Among the five German-Americans on the 23-man roster, Brooks made his national
team debut last August and had only four appearances entering
the World Cup. He was benched twice last season by Hertha Berlin, his club in the German Bundesliga, for a poor performance
in December and being unable to train in April because he was
hampered by a tattoo on his back.

One of the surprise picks by U.S. coach Jurgen Klinsmann,
Brooks hadn’t been in the starting lineup for the Americans’
World Cup opener against Ghana. But after central defender Matt
Besler felt tightness in his right hamstring during the final five
minutes of the first half, Klinsmann sent the 21-year-old Brooks
on for the start of the second.

“With John, I saw, we saw, very early that his passing is amazing.
He’s very calm for his age. Obviously he’s very strong in the air
because he’s so tall,” Klinsmann said. “This is what you read,
then you have to figure out is he ready for such a big thing like a
World Cup already or maybe does it take another year or two in
his development?”

NATAL, Brazil (AP) -- Smiling ear to ear after winning a World
Cup match with his first international goal, John Brooks had a
story to share.

Just four minutes after Andre Ayew’s 82nd-minute goal wiped
out a lead Clint Dempsey had given the U.S. just 29 seconds in,
Brooks outjumped Ghana’s John Boye to meet Graham Zusi’s
corner kick and bounced an 8-yard header past goalkeeper Adam
Kwarasey.
Overcome with emotion, Brooks ran in disbelief, slumped to the
ground arms first and felt teammates pile onto him. When they
finally moved off, he put both hands to his lips and blew a kiss.

United States’ John Brooks celebrates scoring his side’s second goal during the group G
World Cup soccer match between Ghana and the United States at the Arena das Dunas
in Natal, Brazil, Monday, June 16, 2014. The United States defeated Ghana 2-1.

Brooks thought back to two nights earlier and the dream.

It also was on a header.
From a corner kick.
Just liked it happened.
“It was unbelievable,” Brooks said. “I couldn’t believe it.”
Klinsmann chose Brooks over Clarence Goodson, an unused

P E T E R O S E M A N A G E S T E A M ,
1 S T
T I M E
I N
2 5
Y E A R S
About 50 fans paid $250 each to get into a “meet and greet”
with Rose before this game and others paid $150 to have lunch
with him. He did sign some free autographs as he took the field.

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) -- Pete Rose stood behind the batting cage Monday, joking as former major leaguer Joe Mather
hit ball after ball to center field during batting practice for the
Bridgeport Bluefish.
“I asked him, `What are you working on, a sacrifice fly?’” Rose
said.
Charlie Hustle’s jersey was too big and he was wearing slacks
as he exchanged lineup cards with opposing manager Butch
Hobson at home plate. But Rose was back in his element, managing a baseball team, if just for one day.

Rose could take this one-game job because the Bluefish are not
affiliated with any major league team. He said the appearance
wasn’t about bringing attention to the ban or getting reinstated.
He said he was trying to show he could be a good ambassador
for the game.
“If I’m ever reinstated, I won’t need a third chance,” he said.
“Believe me.”
The Bluefish players asked for autographs took pictures and
listened to Rose’s stories of his glory days. Many, like Rose,
also are hoping for one more shot at the big time.
“He’s here, so I’m definitely going to ask him about stuff,” said
40-year-old Luis Lopez, who has spent 20 years playing baseball, but just two at the major league level. “I’m going to pick
his brain about everything, especially hitting, because eventually I want to coach.”
Rose said he would never consider managing an independent
league team full-time. It just doesn’t pay enough. He makes
a lot more money these days making personal appearances
around the country and signing autographs for cash on the Las
Vegas strip.

As the American Outlaws chanted their way out of the stadium,
Brooks missed the chance to meet Vice President Joe Biden when
he visited the locker room. Brooks and Jermaine Jones had been
chosen for random drug tests.
Brooks, who lives in Berlin and has family in Chicago, has only
visited the U.S. for training camps and vacation. But speaking
one day in California last month, he said, “When I’m here, I’m a
full American. I play with heart for America.”
He had nerves initially Monday, yet is thrilled with how things
ended.

“He’s done his time,” he said. “It’s time.”

Nearly two hours after the final whistle, Brooks was among the
last U.S. players to leave the locker room. Someone asked whether he thinks he will start against Portugal on Sunday.

“All I can say about Donald Sterling is, my fiancee is a lot
better looking than his girlfriend,” Rose joked before getting
serious for just a moment.
“A lifetime ban,” he said, “is a long time.”

“I think the first goal was perfect, a perfect start. Couldn’t be
better,” Brooks said.

“I don’t expect anything,” he said. “I just give my best in every
training session, and we’ll see.”
NOTES: The team returned to its base camp of Sao Paulo and
U.S. F Jozy Altidore was scheduled to have his injured left
hamstring examined Tuesday afternoon, U.S. Soccer Federation
spokesman Neil Buethe said. Altidore was hurt in the first half
and replaced by Aron Johannsson.

S P A C E W A L K E R S C O M P L E T E
TIRING ANTENNA INSTALLATION
“Slowly but surely,” one of the spacewalkers said as he worked
with the connectors.
Running behind schedule, Skvortsov and Artemiev moved on
to their next chore. Their to-do list included moving a payload
boom and switching out science experiments.

The 73-year-old whose 4,256 hits are the most in major league
history served as guest skipper for the Bluefish of the independent Atlantic League during their 2-0 win over the Lancaster
(Pennsylvania) Barnstormers. He also coached first base for the
team for the first five innings.
The game at the 5,300-seat stadium was his first managing
job since 1989, when as the skipper of the Cincinnati Reds he
agreed to a lifetime ban from Major League Baseball for betting
on baseball. He later admitted that he bet on Reds games while
running the team.

“They expected more from him the last season. There he got a
little bit of a lesson from his coach,” Klinsmann said. “It’s part
of growing, as well. But we knew that if we had the time now for
more than a month to work him through every training session,
to teach him some elements of the game, that he’s willing to take
that on and learn it quickly. And obviously he learned it quickly.”

About 4,500 fans paid to see the game. George Libretti, 46 of
Beacon Falls, brought his 10-year-old nephew, Robert Rosko,
so the boy could one day say that he saw the greatest hitter who
ever lived. Libretti said he supported Rose’s ban 25 years ago,
but believes the time has come to put him in the Hall of Fame.

Rose said he’s learned to live with his ban. He was asked during
his pregame news conference if he had any advice for Los Angeles Clipper’s owner Donald Sterling on how to deal with his.
Pete Rose, left, and Lancaster Barnstormers manager Butch Hobson, right, talk at home
plate before a game at The Ballpark at Harbor Yard, Monday, June 16, 2014, in Bridgeport, Conn. Rose, banned from Major League Baseball, returned to the dugout for one
day to manage the independent minor-league Bridgeport Bluefish.

The four astronauts inside kept tabs on the 260-mile-high action,
while conducting their own work.
“Pretty neat up here right now,” U.S. astronaut Reid Wiseman
said via Twitter. “Two Russian crew mates are spacewalking but
business as usual for me and (at)astro-alex,” he said, referring to
German Alexander Gerst.
Russian space station crew member Oleg Artemiev floats outside the International
Space Station during a space walk by two Russians, Thursday, June 16, 2014, to install
a new antenna and move a cargo boom. Alexander Skvortsov and Artemiev will also
switch out some science experiments.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- A pair of spacewalking
astronauts managed to install a new antenna Thursday outside the
International Space Station, despite some equipment trouble.

The crew includes three Russians, two Americans and the one
German. The Americans are supposed to venture out on NASA-led spacewalks in August. Skvortsov and Artemiev al

Russians Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemiev panted and
sighed as they dealt with balky clamps and latches. Mission Control outside Moscow urged them to take frequent breaks.
“Resting is most important,” Mission Control radioed in Russian.
Two hours into the spacewalk, the first-time spacewalkers still
were struggling to secure the antenna, considered a major job.
They hauled the antenna out with them, at the start of the spacewalk.
“We almost have it. Almost there,” one of the astronauts said as
the work dragged on.
Two of the three locks clicked into place on the antenna. But
the third would not work right, and the astronauts had to use a
wire tie instead. Each spacewalker tugged on the tie to tighten it.
With that finally complete, the two successfully made a series of
connections, eliciting a “Hurrah!”

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MARE ISLAND, Calif. (AP) -- In drought-stricken California,
young Chinook salmon are hitting the road, not the river, to get
to the Pacific Ocean.
Millions of six-month-old smolts are hitching rides in tanker
trucks because California’s historic drought has depleted rivers
and streams, making the annual migration to the ocean too
dangerous for juvenile salmon.

The silvery smolts, just inches long, acclimated to the water in
the net pens before Fishery Foundation boats took them out to
the bay, where the fish were released and pulled to the ocean by
tides.

“The drought conditions have caused lower flows in the rivers,
warmer water temperatures, and the fish that would normally
be swimming down the rivers would be very susceptible to
predation and thermal stress,” said Kari Burr, fishery biologist
with the Fishery Foundation of California.
California has been trucking hatchery-raised salmon for years
to bypass river dams and giant pumps that funnel water to
Southern California and Central Valley farms.
But this year state and federal wildlife agencies are trucking
nearly 27 million smolts, about 50 percent more than normal,
because of the drought, according to the California Department
of Fish and Wildlife.
Each spring, the Coleman National Fish Hatchery usually

Trucking the smolts ensures a large number will survive and
grow to be the California king salmon prized by fishermen
and seafood lovers. But skipping the river journey means the
migratory fish won’t know how to swim home to spawn in
three years.

releases about 12 million smolts into Battle Creek, a tributary of
the Sacramento River near Redding. But this year, it trucked 7.5
million of them to San Francisco Bay because the drought had
made the 300-mile swim too perilous.
On a recent morning, a small convoy of tanker trucks carrying

A stuffed lion’s head is displayed at a news conference at JFK international Airport,
Monday, June 16, 2014 in New York to highlight efforts by U.S. Customs and Border
Protection and U.S. Fish and Wildlife to deter illegal trafficking in wildlife. The items
displayed were seized from baggage and cargo arriving at the airport. The government
is cracking down on the illegal trafficking, saying some of its import-export activity may
be linked to terrorists.

NEW YORK (AP) -- The U.S. government is stepping up its
crackdown on the illegal trafficking of wild animal products
across the nation’s borders, saying some may be linked to terrorists, federal officials said Monday.

“Poaching in Africa is funding terrorist groups,” U.S. Trade
Representative Michael Froman told a news conference at Kennedy International Airport.

A dead elephant is worth about $18,000 - mostly from the tusk.
Also seized was a small rhino horn libation cup worth tens of
thousands of dollars.
Kennedy handles the largest cargo volume of any U.S. airport,
about $100 billion a year, said Patrick Foye, executive director
of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs
the airport.
And the wildlife element plays an especially powerful role in
national security, said Froman, the chief U.S. trade negotiator
and adviser to President Barack Obama.
More than 20,000 elephants were killed last year along with
about 1,000 rhinos, meeting a rising world demand resulting in
declining populations across Africa, according to officials with
the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of
Wild Fauna and Flora.
This treaty was signed by more than 170 countries to protect
animals that end up as contraband including live pets, hunting
trophies, fashion accessories, cultural artifacts and medicinal

The state-run Nimbus Fish Hatchery near Sacramento usually
releases 3 million of the 4 million Chinook smolts it raises into
the nearby American River, but this year it’s releasing all of
them into the bay.
“Because of the conditions this year and the mortality, it’s better to put them straight into the bay and get them back in three
years,” said fish technician Gregory Ferguson, who was herding
the smolts in ponds toward pumps that sucked them into the
truck tanks headed for Mare Island.

In February, Obama approved a new strategy for fighting trafficking through enforcement, as well as partnerships with other
countries, communities and private industry. For the first time,
U.S. officials are asking trading partners to agree to conservation
measures for wildlife and the environment in return for signing
agreements.

The commercial and recreational fishing industries have been
pushing for the expanded trucking program to increase the
chances of a decent salmon season in 2016, when the smolts
released this year will be adults.

Kennedy customs officials are reaching out to local businesses, plus auction houses like Christie’s and Sotheby’s and even
Carnegie Hall to alert them to illegally traded valuables that may
come their way.

“I actually make my living just trolling for salmon, so it’s pretty
important for me,” said John Terry, commercial salmon fisherman from Aberdeen, Washington, who was unloading his catch
at San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf at the start of commercial
salmon season. “We need the help.”

20,000 ELEPHANTS POACHED
IN AFRICA IN 2013
efforts across multiple countries, as well as greater political and
public attention to this unfolding crisis,” said John Scanlon, the
CITES secretary-general.
About 28 percent of Africa’s elephants are in eastern Africa,
but most of them - close to 55 percent - are in southern Africa.
Some populations of elephants continue to face an immediate
threat of local extinction.

B U F FA L O Z O O R H I N O
CALF FROM CINCINNATI
RHINO SPERM

On display in an airport cargo warehouse operated by the U.S.
Customs and Border Protection was a collection of wildlife
products seized at Kennedy - from ivory disguised to look like
a wooden statue and the stuffed heads of a lion and leopard to
handicrafts, artworks and musical instruments hiding animal
parts.

Paul Chapelle, the agent in charge of New York for the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service, said one horn case resulted in 16
arrests, including that of a mobster from Ireland now serving 13
months behind bars.

The federal hatchery in Shasta County did release 4.5 million smolts into Battle Creek in April after rain temporarily
improved river flows. Hamelberg hopes at least a small number
of them will return in a few years and serve as broodstock for
future generations.

U.S. trade officials believe that groups benefiting from the
poaching include the militant Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda
and South Sudan, the Janjaweed comprised of Sudanese Arab
tribes, and al-Shabab, a jihadist group based in Somalia.

He said such illegal trade is a threat to global security because
it’s driven by criminal elements, including terrorists using
profits from items such as rhinoceros horns and elephant tusks
to finance their activities.

The single priciest item was a rhino horn. It fetches $30,000 per
pound - or about 30 percent more than its weight in gold.

“Because that imprinting cycle is broken, it’s unlikely that
many fish will make it back to Coleman. In other words, they
stray. They won’t find that scent to where home is,” said Scott
Hamelberg, who manages the Coleman National Fish Hatchery.

In this photo taken Tuesday June 10, 2014 and supplied by International Fund For Animal Welfare (IFAW), an orphaned elephant calf, left, one of two, is introduced to an
adult at the Game Rangers International Release Facility at the Kafue National Park
in Zambia. The two calves, whose parents were killed by poachers when they were
two, are to be integrated with the resident orphan herd and later released into the park.
More than 20,000 elephants were poached last year in Africa where large seizures of
smuggled ivory eclipsed those in Asia for the first time, international wildlife regulators
said Friday June 13, 2014.

GENEVA (AP) -- More than 20,000 elephants were poached
last year in Africa where large seizures of smuggled ivory
eclipsed those in Asia for the first time, international wildlife
regulators said Friday.
Eighty percent of the African seizures were in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, three of the eight nations required to draw up
plans to curb ivory smuggling, officials with the Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and
Flora (CITES) reported.
The report says poaching is increasing in Central African
Republic, but declining in Chad. But CITES, which regulates
35,000 species of plants and animals and which banned ivory
trade in 1989, says the overall poaching numbers in 2013
dropped from the previous two years.
“We are seeing better law enforcement and demand-reduction

CINCINNATI (AP) -- The Cincinnati Zoo says a female Indian rhino calf
born recently in New York was produced by artificial insemination using
sperm from a now-dead Cincinnati rhino.
Zoo officials call the calf born June 5 at the Buffalo Zoo a victory for
endangered species.
The father was named Jimmy and died at the Cincinnati Zoo in 2004. His
sperm was frozen, stored and later taken to Buffalo.
The calf’s 17-year-old mother is named Tashi. She previously conceived
and successfully gave birth through natural breeding in 2004 and 2008. But
her mate died, and Buffalo’s new male Indian rhino hasn’t reached sexual
maturity.
Buffalo officials say the calf weighed 144 pounds at birth. They say there
are only 59 Indian rhinos in captivity in North America and about 2,500 in
the wild.